The trailblazer of the 1960s and ‘70s entered the new millennium with hard-won wisdom about “conscious aging,” which he detailed in the book “Still Here” (2000).Born April 6, 1931, in Boston, he was the youngest of three sons of George Alpert, a Jewish lawyer who was a founder of Brandeis University and president of the New Haven Railroad. Mr. Leary accused Mr. Alpert of trying to seduce his 15-year-old son, Jack, whom Mr. Alpert often took care of while Mr. Leary, a single parent, traveled.“Uncle Dick is evil,” Mr. Leary told Jack, according to Mr. Lattin’s book.“Oh, come on, Dad,” Jack replied. They became drinking buddies. Dass er studieren soll, steht ausser Frage. Ram Dass later recalled that when he got off the plane in Boston — barefoot, robed and bearded — his father told him to get in the car quickly “before anyone sees you.” He moved into a cabin on his father’s estate in New Hampshire. The National Lampoon dubbed him Baba Rum Raisin. Alpert said the drug was “less dangerous than a four-year liberal arts college education” and lectured about its potential to groups as varied as the Food and Drug Administration and the Hell’s Angels. One issue was Mr. Alpert’s acknowledged bisexuality. He believed he had met his own soul. She left The Times in 2015.Black golfer Frank Snow, who for decades taught the game to children in South L.A., dies at 78. He went on sojourn in India and in 1968 returned as Ram Dass, a name that became synonymous with another of that era’s social and psychological explosions.As Ram Dass, Alpert spread the word that turning inward was far more powerful than just turning on. Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a … “I didn’t realize,” he wrote later, “that my leg was no longer working because I’d had a stroke.”He nearly died from the massive cerebral hemorrhage. He honed an expertise in psychology through three degrees: a bachelor’s from Tufts University in 1952, a master’s from Wesleyan University in 1954 and a doctorate from Stanford University in 1957. After considering “every super CIA paranoia I’ve ever had,” he began sobbing.The next day, Maharaji asked for the “medicine” Alpert had brought from the United States. It not only took away his ability to walk and talk but shattered his self-image as a vibrant 65-year-old. Events led him to a twinkly old man wrapped in a blanket: The experience caused a spiritual upheaval in Mr. Alpert, who forever after considered MaharajjiRam Dass gave Maharajji some LSD, but it had no effect. “I said to him, ‘So am I,’” he recalled. In the fall of 1963, after visiting Mexico to sample psychedelic mushrooms, the two men and a group of followers moved to Millbrook, N.Y., finding quarters in a 64-room mansion on a 2,500-acre estate provided by Peggy Hitchcock, an heiress to the Mellon fortune. He responded by launching several nonprofit organizations, including the Seva Foundation, which works to alleviate disease and poverty around the world. But the mystic seemed unfazed.After hours passed with the guru doing nothing more than “twinkle” at Alpert in his usual way, Alpert realized that the guru had no need for pharmaceutical help to reach a higher state of consciousness. Richard shares his name with Richard Alpert, former Harvard psychology professor and Eastern-influenced author and figure from the 1960s and 70s, now known as Ram Dass.
He was imagining what it would be like to be old and infirm when he noticed that his leg seemed to have fallen asleep.
With a male lover in San Francisco and a female lover in Cambridge, Alpert was struggling to keep the strands of his sexual life separate. But he had brought the drug to India exactly for this purpose: to find a holy man who could explain the nature of its magic.He gave Maharaji 900 micrograms, a substantial dose that should have produced a substantial reaction.